


Japris

by QuickYoke



Category: The Devil Wears Prada (2006)
Genre: Fluff, Gen, Memes, crackfic, so many memes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-07
Updated: 2017-06-07
Packaged: 2018-11-10 01:33:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11117112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuickYoke/pseuds/QuickYoke
Summary: Andy introduces the jorts meme to the Runway offices.





	Japris

 

It starts off with an IM to Nigel, who is appropriately aghast but laughs loudly until he has to set down his iPad for fear of dropping it on the ground. Emily is next. She splutters and covers her face with her hands, peeking through her fingers at the screen as though she can't look away, as though she's witnessing a train crash. 

"Oh my god," she whispers, staring at the picture Andy just sent her of a particularly hideous pair of jean crocs. "Oh my  _god_. I hate -! How dare you send me -! Oh my god."

It quickly spirals downhill from there. As it turns out, the employees at Runway have more than just a sadomasochistic streak where Miranda Priestly is concerned, and their humour extends to memes that -- in their minds -- fall just short of body horror. Images of increasingly disgusting jean material circulate like wildfire in a game of one-up-manship the likes of which Andy should have expected from a staff full of Type As. The art department causes a sensation when they put their photoshop skills to good use by creating what Nigel calls "an abomination to mankind" and which has Emily storming downstairs to demand the perpetrator show themselves so they can be tried at the Hague.

The merriment ends abruptly however when someone -- from HR no less -- slips and sends an IM to all, not realising that it would of course cross Miranda's screen. 

There follows no explosion, no dressing down, not even a single comment on the slip up, and Miranda's silence is terrifying enough to cause an immediate emergency lockdown on the IM system to the extent that no less than three Hermes orders are mistakenly placed rather than clarified in chat. A hush falls over the whole office. Once where smiles and guffaws would have been hidden behind hands, there is instead a quiet panic. For two days this continues until finally it shatters. 

Miranda has ordered the usual display racks into her office for approval, the hangars bustling with clothing and accessories. Andy takes notes in a corner while Nigel and a few women from the styling department flit about the office putting together various outfits for Miranda's approval. Miranda herself watches the flurry of frenzied movement with an intent expression, tapping her glasses against her lower lip while she leans her hip against the corner of her desk. 

"We were thinking a relaxed Grace Kelly look," Nigel explains, holding up a pair of dark-washed slacks and a deceptively simple white blouse. "Timelessly classic chic." 

A tiny furrow of consideration appears between Miranda's brows before she waves her hand. "Lose the slacks -- it's spring. Is it so impossible to get a decent pair of japris?" 

Andy nearly drops her notebook. 

The slip of the tongue sends a tense stillness through the room. Everyone stares. Hearing what she just said, Miranda's eyes widen and a nearly imperceptible flush rises to her cheeks. Andy and Nigel exchange brief looks, and Andy can tell from his pinched expression that he is trying to hold back an outburst of laughter as hard as she is. 

Before anyone can get themselves fired for bursting into a titter verging on hysterics, Miranda clears her throat and hurriedly stuffs her glasses back into place, rough enough that the black Gucci frames sit crooked on the bridge of her nose. She fixes them each in turn with a death glare that promises torment unending should a whisper of this moment pass beyond her office, then growls, "Capris.  _Now._ " 

They scatter. Nigel is first out the door, power-walking fast enough to put the Flash to shame, and Andy excuses herself from the office, biting her lip. She barely makes it into the coat room outside, only to find that Nigel is already there, burying his face in one of Emily’s shawls in order to muffle his howls of laughter. 

"Move over!" Andy gasps, trying to contain herself, tears of mirth pricking at the corners of her eyes.

"No! Get your own closet!" Nigel wipes his eyes on the edges of the shawl. "God knows I spent enough time in one of these things when I was younger!" 

"If I go out there, I will crack and she will fire me!" 

"Good! This is all your fault!" 

"Nigel!" 

"Well it is! You started this! Oh my god -" He bites his lip. "Did you see her face?" 

 _"Stop!"_  

They only manage to compose themselves when Emily wrenches the door open to find them both wheezing and leaning on their knees like they'd run a mile in under five minutes. "I don't know what havoc you two wrecked in there," she hisses at them, "but the IMs are firing up again. We need damage control and where do I find you two? Hiding in a closet!" 

“Oh no.”

“Yes.  _Oh no.”_ Emily mimics them with barbed aplomb. Suddenly her expression turns to one of barely contained rage, “Nigel, what on earth are you doing to my shawl! You of all people -! That is  _vintage Chanel!”_

Without another word Nigel pushes the accessory in question into Andy’s hands and darts free of Emily’s wrath, so that Emily is left to glare at Andy as though she were the culprit. “Um.” Andy flashes her best guilty smile and smooths the shawl back over its hangar. “Sorry?”

“Oh, don’t give me those big doe eyes of yours!” Emily snaps. “Get out here and fix this mess!”

Scurrying over to her desk, Andy has just enough time to fix her mascara before Nigel has returned with a rack full of nothing but capris. She goes to open the door for him, but he stops her with a hand on her arm. “You think I’m crazy enough to go in there? This one’s all on you, Six. I’m too pretty to die.”

Andy stares at him, incredulous. “You can’t be serious.”

In answer he pushes the rack at her. At least he has the courtesy to open the glass doors and let her through. She aims her best glower over her shoulder. Trundling the rack into Miranda’s office, it feels remarkably like a paper she’d read back at university about ancient communities leaving a sacrifice to the elements in supplication to the wrath of some god. There Miranda sits, perched behind her desk, writing notes in that signature fluid script of hers across a mock-up page. She glances up over the rim of her spectacles when the door shuts behind Andy, leaving them together. 

Without speaking, Miranda waves Andy towards the side of the room that already holds three racks of clothing, a bored sweep of her hand. Andy pushes the rack into place and starts to pluck out a pair of capris for Miranda’s inspection when instead she stops, turns, and announces, “I’m sorry.”

Miranda leans back in her chair, saying nothing, but there’s a brusque sort of inquisitiveness to her silence that drives Andy to forge on.

“For circulating those memes.” Andy clarifies, trying and failing to not wring her hands. When Miranda only arches an eyebrow at her, Andy stumbles. “A meme is -”

“I know what a meme is,” Miranda hisses. Snatching the glasses from her face and tossing them onto her desk, she rises and crosses the room. Her custom-made four-inch Jimmy Choos gouge the line she walks.

Andy expects fire, she expects brimstone, she expects Miranda to descend upon her in a sulphurous cloud. She does not expect Miranda to reach by her and pull a pair of capris from the rack, turning it over beneath her critical hand and not giving Andy so much as a sideways slant of her eyes. The urge wells up in Andy’s gut to shuffle aside, to put space between them, but through sheer strength of will alone she stands perfectly still, afraid to breathe too loudly. Miranda places the pair of capris back on the rack, picks up another, repeats. The silence that settles between them stifles, and Andy can see the belying twitch at the corner of Miranda’s mouth that says she enjoys watching Andy sweat. When she finally does speak, Andy tenses, ready for the worst.

“Andrea, I want you to send a note to all staff members, reminding them that in this establishment I expect nothing less than pristine professionalism.” Still not looking at her, Miranda purses her lips and frowns at a crooked stitch in the hem she holds up for inspection. Andy meanwhile has already fished out the pen and notebook that never leaves her person and is scribbling in shorthand as Miranda continues. “What they do to amuse themselves in their spare time is none of my business, but that does not extend to the use of company IT systems.” She turns her attention upon Andy now, and her expression is thunderous while her voice remains deadly soft, “And if I see so much as a thread of denim cross my desk in the next month, so help me God -”

“It won’t happen,” Andy promises hastily.

Miranda freezes her in place with a piercing look, the kind that lances into Andy’s chest and lodges itself there like an iron-bright barb. “Good. Now tell Nigel to stop pressing his face up against the glass and get in here. Yellow is not his colour.” She waves Andy away, turning her attention back to the capris with an air of practised, affected boredom. “That’s all.”

 


End file.
